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Countering stereotypes

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MUSLIMSedited by Barnaby Rogerson and Rose Baring

Eland £12.99 pp312

Shopping for kosher cucumbers in Golders Green last week, I was drawn to the memorial to the dead of the first and second world wars, inscribed with the names of young Jews and Christians who killed, and were killed, for causes in which they believed. We have no trouble seeing them as heroes, and it never crosses our minds that something malign might lurk in the religions that sanctified such slaughter.

But that is not most people’s view of the young Muslims who are today strapping on explosives to sacrifice themselves with equal belief. On the contrary. It has become a lazy, western commonplace that there is something inherent in Islam that produces death and destruction — and this collection of essays sets out to counter the stereotype.